In the use of plastic gobs separated from extruded stream of material, a plastic gob is severed from the extrudate and delivered directly to tooling.
Among the objectives of the present invention are to provide a method and apparatus for cutting gobs from a stream of a plastic extrudate outside of the plane in which separate tooling forms that gob into an end product such as a plastic article or a liner on a plastic article; wherein such method and apparatus provides a greater range in flexibility in the gob size and the thermal plastic materials used; wherein the gob is cut at a point remote from the forming tooling and thereby provides the ability to have greater capacity in gob size providing a greater range of plastic products which can be made; which method and apparatus permits the delivery and discharge of the gobs accurately at the forming point; wherein the apparatus can be positioned spatially for movement in horizontal or vertical planes or in planes to angles to the horizontal or vertical; wherein the method and apparatus utilizes a plurality of contoured gob cutters on a rotating disk that can be at any angle in space ranging from horizontal to vertical.
In accordance with the invention, a plurality of contoured gob cutters or nests are provided that are moved at an endless path past the plastic material being extruded from an extruder nozzle, thereby cutting a portion of the extrudate stream to form gobs. The nests are then moved to a position where the gobs are successively delivered by application of a force such as pneumatic pressure through the nests into the forming tools. The nests are supported on a rotating disk. Each nest is maintained at a temperature sufficient to retain the gob but not so great that the gobs sticks to the nest. In one form the temperature is controlled by a liquid coolant flowing through the disk. A control system is provided for electronically controlling the various components of the system.